Nolan Arenado, Paul Goldschmidt and Matt Carpenter all homered off Stephen Strasburg and the St. Louis Cardinals hammered the Washington Nationals 14-3 on Tuesday night.
Jack Flaherty (2-0) allowed one run on three hits with six strikeouts in five innings as St. Louis snapped a three-game losing streak.
Strasburg (0-1) was racked for eight runs — seven earned — on eight hits and five walks, two of them intentional. The 2019 World Series MVP was pulled after allowing all three batters he faced in the fifth to reach base, leading to a nine-run inning by the Cardinals.
Goldschmidt hit his first home run of the season, connecting in the first for his 250th career home run. The Cardinals sent 14 batters to the plate and added nine runs in the fifth.
Cardinals: LHP Kwang Hyun Kim (back) is scheduled to be activated from the Injured List to start on Saturday at Philadelphia. St. Louis shuffled its roster by optioning RHP Johan Oviedo to the club’s alternate training site.
Cincinnati leads the NL Central by one game over the Cardinals and Brewers, the fourth place Cubs are two games out.
Washington will send RHP Joe Ross (0-0, 0.00 ERA) to the mound to face St. Louis veteran RHP Adam Wainwright (0-1, 8.22) in the final game of the teams’ three-game series with a day game Wednesday, 11:20 with the pregame and the first pitch at 12:15 on KIRX.